disclaimer: i'm the first to admit that reading cards is fun and i truly understand wanting to do it every day, finding a way to make that happen. if you're doing a daily reading and are fulfilled, all the power to you. this semi-rant is about the poor souls who think it's what's expected otherwise you're somehow a tarot fraud.
it is kind of interesting how the tarot world went from "you really shouldn't read for yourself" to "if you're not doing your cards every day, do you even have a Practice?" in a matter of a few decades (what's a practice? like - tarot as magical practice? as a spiritual practice? what if that's not what tarot is to someone? regardless of whether they have an actual magic and/or spiritual practice alongside it)
i think somewhere along the way we conflated two different meanings of "practice". there's the evergreen advice given to beginners to pull a daily card for practice (ie. for learning, getting familiarized with the cards) and that's somehow morphed into doing a whole daily reading for yourself as "your tarot practice" (be it magical or spiritual, practice as "path", kind of akin to the business meaning of idk having a dental practice or practicing law).
now you get monthly instagram challenges filled with prompts for daily readings, if you can't figure out something to do by yourself* - some of them really deep, well thought out and structured! but how on earth are you going to integrate what you've learned if you're doing more and more digging every day, every month? obviously it depends on what you're reading about but if you're doing deep work, "shadow work", or any kind of introspection/working on yourself (which seems to be the preferred tarot modality in recent years) - these things can take years. obviously tarot can help keep you on track, kind of checking in with the progress, seeing if things need tweaking, but not by piling on more and more new jobs on the daily.
and now people are getting all "burned out" on tarot and feeling guilty about it and flailing on how to "stay in touch" with tarot when they can't give it their all. (and then you've got plenty of "content" about how to do all that, how to take a break but not lose touch, so social media wins yet again) y'all... i understand it can be a great consumerist hobby** (most hobbies nowadays have a heavy consumerist slant due to basically any visual social media channel being a paid ad or being functionally indistinguishable from one even if unpaid) but really you can bring it back to basics. let it be a supportive tool for whenever you need it, like aspirin. are you feeling guilty for not splinting your arm every day? no, it's not necessary. literally go live your life and if you encounter a problem - voila! your tarot decks are waiting for you.
it's kind of like that writing advice - if you want to write, you've got to go live a life and have experiences. what are you going to read tarot about if all you're doing is sitting saturated in tarot? i'm not speaking down from a high horse, my life is small and guess what - my tarot "practice" reflects that, i don't really read about it too much! it's a problem for me as i really love reading! but the real satisfying, juicy readings are ones that arise from real need. forcing a reading out of thin air on subjects that aren't really a problem - those don't feel like anything, wet tissue readings. i'm wondering if the people who overwhelmingly do these daily non-readings ever really get to feel the potency and life-changing effects of tarot. i hope so.
in closing i want to encourage everyone to play and experiment with the tarot in a myriad ways, read and watch and learn from others, innovate. be creative, be magical, and sure - read for yourself but don't think a tarot practice is any one thing, particularly not one that feels daunting, repetitive or un-nourishing.
___
